Mere decades from now, a fragment of humanity has abandoned Earth in favor of a new home. To survive the journey to the new world, these humans have frozen themselves in cryogenic sleep. Charged with their protection are the R.A.I.N.s mechanically engineered guardians with the memories, and emotions of the humans under their care digitally imprinted in their "memory cores". On an alien world the R.A.I.N.s protect their still sleeping humans, and their damaged ships from the native animals, and one of their own gone mad. Through our programming prowess, our artistic vision, and our unique narrative, we have realized this reality in the form of a Source based game. This is R.A.I.N....

R.A.I.N. Will draw players who enjoy gameplay elements such as:

Micro Real Time Strategy (MRTS)
- The player directing the AI against which players fight will do so through a top down RTS view, managing AI units. They will only have to focus on deployment and composition of units, and not
production and resource gathering.

First Person Shooter (FPS)
- The majority of players will view the game in the first person, using firearms and melee weapons.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA)
- In game players will select from a number of different player "characters" all based around specialized archetypes. Player resources will be boosted by kills, and used to purchase in game
items which give specific stat and active boosts.

Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
- The game will contain a meta system, in which player versus commander wins and losses are measured. The capturing of certain zones will effect the availability of certain in game items and abilities. Each zone lost and gained through online matches will directly effect the player base as a whole, encouraging organization and a stronger community.

I am meeting with my concept artists on the 15th. The artistic direction will be officially determined when I review all of the sample works they have submitted. I currently have five artists assigned to the prosject, based on submissions I will also name an artistic lead.

Additionally we will be making a prototype using placeholder Source assets in the near future to begin unit and item balancing. Milestones have yet to be established, but the aim is to be in beta around Q2 2013. Fortunately, the game itself does not call for us to essentially rebuild source, my programmer tells me it should be a relatively straightforward expansion on the engine. Fortunately, he will also be teaching me how to script a little bit, as I am currently a programming idiot.

On a final note, I completed and sent out the design document roughly 3 days ago, however I have continued to expand and refine things, bumping the size up from 12 to 20 pages. The revised document will be sent out on the 19th. I am going to release updated versions of the document to the staff in two week intervals. Additionally I am working on expansion of the narrative, securing a dedicated server, brushing up on my Hammer mapping abilities, and building the site.